Dropbox acquired a New York startup that aimed to help publishers make money — and its service will shut down

The service will be shutting down December 21, and the
team will join Dropbox.

The startup had previously raised $12 million.

Dropbox has acquired Verst, a New York startup that aimed to help
web publishers and creators make money through features like
paywalls, the companies announced Thursday.

Verst's service will be shutting down on December 21 and the team
will be joining Dropbox. The price of the sale wasn't disclosed.

Verst started its life as DWNLD, which landed $12 million from
Greylock Partners in 2015 to build a platform that made people
custom apps. The problem was that most people weren't using
publisher apps to read or watch content, Verst CEO AJ Frank
told
Business Insider earlier this year. They were either using
social apps like Facebook or the open web.

So DWNLD pivoted to "Verst" about a year ago. The new conception
of Verst was an easy platform to help publishers and creators —
especially small ones — make revenue on the web.

When Business Insider wrote about Verst in July, it was because
it had debuted a
paywall feature that let publishers separate
publicly accessible content from more "premium" fare. Verst's
standard subscription was $29.99 per month and included website
hosting, paywall, and other features like the ability to run ads
and A/B test headlines and images.

In a statement, the Verst team said it would "apply
everything we’ve learned towards Dropbox’s mission to simplify
the way people work together."